The evolving nature of town centre management internationally and my advocacy for a strategic global-local approach to practice and research in this profession

Town centre management (TCM) as a practice-based concept has existed in the UK, North America and much of Western Europe for over twenty five years. TCM was first defined by Wells (1991, p. 24) in the academic literature as “a comprehensive response to competitive pressures, which involves development, management and promotion of both public and private areas within town centres, for the benefit of all concerned”. Yet, this concept has evolved considerably since its first inceptions in the 1980s as the public-private partnerships that manage high streets, districts, town centres, quarters and other place formats have themselves faced a period of unprecedented environmental and socio-economic changes in the matrix of our towns and cities. This DProf by Public Works project explores the author’s contribution to this evolving paradigm over a ten year period by advocating a global-local approach to the town centre management profession. Specific knowledge gaps addressed by the author over this period include the contribution of small and medium sized retailers to the vitality, diversity and viability of town centres in a number of European countries, a pan-European classification tool (typology) of town centre management schemes, the development of the UK’s first ever professional and academic qualifications in place management and the founding of the first-ever practice-based international interdisciplinary publication on the management of towns and cities – the Journal of Town and City Management. The author’s transformational learning experience over this period serves as a backdrop for reflection throughout. Finally, insights into the future of town centres are offered along with some of the key strategic challenges that the town centre management profession will need to address in the medium term in order to continue to thrive into the future

Successful town centres: Developing effective strategies

The high street and the retail sector are facing a period of flux with tremendous pressures from local, national and global consumer trends, including rapid changes in the fiscal climate affecting local authorities. This situation has become particularly acute since the global economic downturn of 2008, which many see as the start of a significant long term global restructuring or the world’s economy. Building on the findings of recent Government thinking, including the “Understanding high street performance” report by Genecon and the UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills published in 2012, this study argues for a fresh approach to the situation faced by the retail sector, the high street and, more generally, town centres across the country. Instead of a reactive approach to consumer trends, this report argues for a re-think of the strategic positioning of town centres to reclaim them to their rightful position and role as places that serve their communities, visitors, businesses and key stakeholders with a quality of experience that encourages them to keep coming back, staying longer and becoming local residents in due course. In line with this, the achievement of prosperity for town centres is aligned here with their strategic aspirations, and ability to satisfy changing demands, which this report suggests includes a holistic approach to the integration and management of the daytime, evening and night time economies. These three segments of the 24-hr economy should be seen as part of one menu that town centres offer in an economy increasingly driven by customer experience and perceptions. To achieve this, key town centre decision makers - who should include the business community as well as local residents - need first to establish a vision for the future of their town centre that is anchored in the ‘personality’ or unique characteristics of their town, sometimes referred to as the ‘DNA’ of the place. The aims of this study are to: 1. Present a set of tools that will help places of different sizes (from small market towns to large city centres and potentially also villages and rural locations) to plot a locally tailor-made strategic road map towards prosperity informed by their stakeholders. 2. Develop and present a state-of-the-art Town Centre Classification Matrix linked to a ‘personality’ test for town centres. This tool, which can be used for individual retailers and businesses as well as entire towns and tourist destinations, represents the first stage of strategic positioning and includes key elements of perceptions among visitors, residents and businesses. 3. Develop and present a new and clear national performance framework for town centres is presented. This framework is linked to the Town Centre Classification Matrix and allows places to evaluate their current situation and to monitor progress towards their strategic vision or objectives. This is achieved through a ground-breaking approach that effectively demystifies the concept of town centre performance indicators. Each indicator is explained in an approachable manner with data collection methodologies that include the possibility of using commercially available data or adopting a do-it-yourself method to field research locally. 4. Empower and support communities, Town Teams, Portas Pilots, local authority representatives, businesses operating in or near town centres, trader organisations, Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs), town centre managers, business improvement district managers, policy makers, town planners, charities, national retail associations, shopping centre managers, urban regeneration practitioners, tourism officers, consultancies and researchers. 5. Help locations and centres of all sizes to make key investment decisions adopting a strategic approach using decision support tools (including key performance indicators) that enable decision makers to prioritise and deal with local issues effectively. Additionally, the indicators used in this study also support users who wish to do so in pursuing further market research avenues to gain a better understanding of their town centre and the complexity of interactions between different parameters. This includes the differences that may exist in some places between facts and perceptions (e.g. reported retail crime versus perceptions of crime and safety in the town centre). As in any change management context, it is vital to know the facts so that informed decisions can be taken to prioritise available resources effectively. Based on the findings of this study, there follow ten key recommendations for further action from central government, LEPs, the retail sector and key local decision makers: 1. The role of retail and other businesses (e.g. leisure) in town centres should be revised to adopt a more holistic approach bringing the daytime, evening and night time economies under a common umbrella of strategic positioning and performance. 2. The national performance framework for town centres and Town Centre Classification Matrix presented here should be adopted nationally as part of a wider package to support ailing high streets and town centres. 3. A National Observatory for Town Centre Prosperity should be created for the UK, based on the Town Centre Performance Barometer Toolkit presented here. This national observatory should act as a common database of best practice and avoid simplistic benchmarking or league table approaches. Instead, it should focus on the sharing of innovative and entrepreneurial practices adopted by different town centres to achieve prosperity through inclusive and strategic partnership approaches at all levels. 4. A long term analysis of UK town centre prosperity trends should be carried out on the basis of field data collected using the performance criteria presented in this study. Whilst the indicator-based Town Centre Performance Barometer Toolkit is adequate for a first snap shot of the issues affecting different town centres today, it will only provide limited assistance to locations unless trends can be developed for each indicator through continuous use over a longer time frame. 5. The role of effective and genuine partnership-based place management as a key mechanism in the strategic visioning and delivery of prosperous town centres of all sizes should be recognised and supported by central and local government, urban regeneration professionals, LEPs and key local decision makers. This should apply not only to the operational management of town centres but, crucially, to key decisions affecting their development, including major interventions and regeneration projects with an impact on future growth prospects. 6. The effectiveness of current place management models (including Town Teams, Portas Pilots and Business Improvement Districts, among others) should be investigated further with due attention to place management practice overseas to establish more focused support interventions from the public and private sectors in achieving better results in each case without reinventing the wheel. 7. The impact of high performing town and city centres on neighbouring smaller centres should be investigated further, particularly by LEPs, taking a regional network and impact approach to avoid a polarisation of resources towards a (limited number of) high performing town or city centres or the squandering of resources on duplication in a small geographic area. Similarly, governance issues affecting LEPs and local councils in areas (including town centres) located on different local authority boundaries should be addressed as part of a wider framework. 8. The interactions between town centre performance parameters and their cause-effect relationships should be researched further as there is currently a limited level of evidence and understanding of these beyond relatively simple one-to-one (and not one-to-many) relationships. 9. A better understanding of consumer behaviour within the town centre ecosystem needs to be achieved at both macro and micro level in order to better support long-term decision making for their effective strategic positioning. This study offers a first step towards this by highlighting the importance of visitor perceptions but does not address the deeper and more complex mechanisms that govern the development of these perceptions. 10. The national observatory recommended above should develop further the indicator-based toolkit presented here to create indices linked to a weighting system for individual indicators derived from an extensive nation-wide field research programme on town centre prosperity

Written evidence submitted to "High streets and town centres in 2030 inquiry" parliamentary select committee

The current state of high streets and town centres in England and much of the UK can be probably best described as “being at a crossroads” in terms of central government’s policy making as well as the effectiveness of their management. Although online retail is progressively undermining the viability of many traditional high street retail formats, it could also be argued that there are a number of avenues that remain underdeveloped by town centres and high streets. These include the management of the visitor economy, the development of attractive evening and night-time economy formats, the innovative use of traditional markets (for instance, as platforms for innovation and local entrepreneurship) and the strategic positioning of town centres and high streets as competitive place brands that build on the local DNA of the area to offer a unique selling proposition that is not limited to retail

Events and their impact on place - towards an international practice-based classification system

Events and festivals have been shown to be catalysts for place making, particularly in terms of community engagement, pride of place and even place branding, though the latter remains a contested topic. Whilst a substantial and growing body of literature exists on the impact of events and festivals on town and city centres, much of the focus of past research has been on economic and social issues. Yet, as the focus of event impact evaluation begins to shift towards their longer term legacy - the London Olympic Games have been a prime example of this -, this paper argues that the environmental impact research agenda will grow in importance and summarises some of the early findings of a pan-European research study led by the University of East London with project partners in ten different countries and funding from the European Regional Development Fund’s INTERREG IVC programme. In line with this and building on earlier work on town centre management and urban revitalisation schemes across Europe, this paper argues the case for the development of an international classification system for events and festivals that helps funders and local policy makers to compare international practice and improve decision making with regards to event planning, funding and implementation with particular emphasis on sustainability

Dark destinations – Visitor reflections from a holocaust memorial site

Abstract Purpose – Dark tourism and, more specifically, visitor experiences at Nazi concentration camp memorials are emerging fields of research in tourism studies and destination management. This paper builds on this growing body of knowledge and focuses on the World War II Nazi concentration camp at Dachau in Germany to explore the psychological impact of the site on its visitors as well as critical self-reflection processes triggered by this experience. Design/methodology/approach – This micro-netnography resulted in fifteen online semi-structured interviews carried out with people who visited Dachau between 2003 and 2015. The interviews involved participants from eleven different nationalities and a range of age groups. Findings – This study has shown that emotions that surface during a tourist’s visit to a concentration camp destination can linger well after they have left the site. In fact, feelings of sadness, depression, anger and existential questions can haunt visitors for a considerable amount of time after their visit. Further reflections by visitors also included a more critical appreciation of world affairs. This is of particular significance when considering the behavior of tourists in an urban setting. Originality/value – This research builds on previous dark tourism studies related to the onsite emotions experienced by visitors to concentration camp memorial sites and their travel motivation but takes this knowledge further by exploring the hitherto uncharted longer-term post-experience impacts of these sites on their visitors. Recommendations for dark tourism destinatio

Business improvement districts and the visitor economy

Tourism is one of the largest components of the global economy and has been one of the only reliable drivers of economic growth and job creation in the United Kingdom since the start of the global economic crisis. 17% of all jobs created in the UK between 2010 and 2014 came from the hospitality industry alone, and total tourism employment is responsible for nearly one in ten of all jobs in the UK. Tourism currently contributes £126.9bn to GDP and has a significant economic impact in all of the UK’s nations and regions. Despite these impressive statistics, it is common to hear tourism described as insignificant by policymakers and businesses alike, and many BIDs undervalue the contribution that can be made by visitors of all kinds to thriving local economies

City centres as places for strategic cooperation through active city management - the significance of trade entities

This paper posits that the contemporary city should be viewed as a common space that needs the effort of many various stakeholders in order to satisfy the diverse (and changing) needs of its stakeholders. Yet, achieving this effectively requires active management and coordination of a range of activities. This paper discusses three examples of recent activities in Cracow (Poland) that reflect strategic approach. The first of these case studies focuses on identifying the factors encouraging students to remain in Cracow after completing their studies. The second case study corresponds to a shopping centre opened in 2006 and the last case study shows the recent application of the cultural park legal framework to the city centre of Cracow. This study also makes reference to recent research funded by the European Commission’s Life Long Learning programme on the professional competences of city managers across 6 countries

National high street retail and town centre policy at a cross roads in England and Wales

For eighty years, UK government policy related to urban sprawl, town centres and high streets in England and Wales has been dominated by planning/land-use control. In the post-war period, retail developments have often been discussed in the literature on planning for places – but the wide range of pressures for retail change are rarely brought together. This review of policy discusses many of these pressures: many of which fall beyond the urban planning remit. For example, although retail planning regulations have been influenced by Central Place Theory, this theoretical framework offers no insight on those private sector businesses that interface with urban planning. Worse, few (if any) professional town planners study retailing before formulating plans. Furthermore, the willingness of successive governments to exert meaningful influence through planning rules has ebbed and flowed, leaving town centres at a potential crossroads. This study addresses the vital missing link to business operations – and the rising pressures upon them – using Institutional Theory. Building on the findings of this analysis as well as earlier studies from other parts of the world, this article outlines implications for the management of town and city centres in England and Wales